Labour have said if you earn under $150,000 a year you need welfare payments from the Government if you have a baby. The following MPs have a salary below $150,000 so if their partner is not working and they (or their partner) has a baby, taxpayers will have to fork out a baby bonus to them under Labour.

Grant Robertson, Labour

Shane Jones, Labour

Jacinda Ardern, Labour

Chris Hipkins, Labour

Nanaia Mahuta, Labour

Phil Twyford, Labour

David Shearer, Labour

Su’a William Sio, Labour

Phil Goff, Labour

Louisa Wall, Labour

Andrew Little, Labour

Moana Mackey, Labour

David Clark, Labour

Kris Faafoi, Labour

Carol Beaumont, Labour

Megan Woods, Labour

Darien Fenton, Labour

Trevor Mallard, Labour

Poto Williams, Labour

Clare Curran, Labour

Rajen Prasad, Labour

Raymond Huo, Labour

Rino Tirikatene, Labour

Meka Whaitiiri, Labour

David Clendon, Greens

Denise Roche, Greens

Gareth Hughes, Greens

Holly Walker, Greens

Jan Logie, Greens

Julie Anne Genter, Greens

Kevin Hague, Greens

Mojo Mathers, Greens

Andrew Williams, NZ First

Richard Prosser, NZ First

Brendan Horan, Independent

Phil Heatley, National

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, National

Ian McKelvie, National

Simon O’Connor, National

Paul Foster-Bell, National

Claudette Hauiti, National

So the question I would ask each of those MPs is if they agree it is a good use of taxpayer money to give them a welfare payment of $3,000 a year if they or their partner chose to have a baby? Do they think that on their salary of $147,800 that taxpayers should be giving them welfare payments if they or their partner have a baby?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 28th, 2014 at 2:00 pm and is filed under NZ Politics.
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All of Labours’ policies are about how to get more people on welfare. Free student loans (get them young), WFF (snare the middle class), this one (grab Cullen’s rich pricks). They should just put income tax at 100% and then form some committees to determine what you’re allowed to spend their money on.

Yeah I think any of the male MPs you’ve mentioned will struggle to have a baby. And as I commented on your other thread – you might have been too busy writing this one – from later in the year a backbencher’s salary will almost certainly exceed $150,000. In other words, no MP will qualify for the baby bonus.

Of course it is. But it deflects attention away from John Key’s announcement that he supports extending paid parental leave. How dare he support a Labour policy! Righties must be turning in their graves…

This baby bonus could end up being a cheap method of contraception. I read through the list, and the very thought of having sex with many of the Labour and Green MPs has led to me taking a vow of celibacy.

@ross69 at 2.31pm.
You seem to be saying that Grant Robertson “would struggle to have a baby”.
I happen to live in his electorate. In his occasional “here I am” blurb he sends out he commented last year on the fact that he had just become a Grandfather. DPF is also in the electorate I think and may remember the claim.
Miracles do happen don’t they?

@davidp. Shane Jones has about 7 kids I think, so someone was willing.

Ah. Now I see the argument (continuing from the other thread). We’re attempting to focus on DPFs specific people that he named, and point out that most of them won’t end up eligible. In so doing I think we’re trying to ignore the underlying concern – that someone / a household on $150K per annum is doing way better than most NZers, and that it makes little sense to tax most NZers so as to give money to this person/family.

Is there a reason some (looking at you Psycho Milt and Ross69) are ignoring that?

The fact that so few lab/Green MPs earn/produce anything outside of their parliamentary existences, shows how disconnected they are from how real wealth is produced & encouraged. Hence the policies they throw up.

1/ not that it matters……but if Labour implement this they are in power and those Labour MP’s above would be paid over $150,000?
2/ if there is a baby then it’s assumed one of the parents will cease work….so forget this double income bullshit

Is there a reason some (looking at you Psycho Milt and Ross69) are ignoring that?

DPF seems to have decided “backbench MPs qualify for this” is a good attack line, and I’m pointing out why it isn’t. Whether a household on $150,000 needs welfare payments is a separate issue – I don’t think they do, but then the games of politicians often see them doing things I don’t think are necessary (eg tax cuts for rich people, asset sales etc). What the political game here for Labour is, you can see over at the Dim Post.. I think he’s bang on the money.

Steve: There is one who tried to earn a real living, David Parker. Guess what? In the good old days when making a buck was relatively easy, he went belly up, ruining his business partner big time, then denying the fact in Parliament. Clark demoted him for telling lies. Now he is involved as a financial spokesman in the party and responsible for this sort of fiscally dyslexic crap.

DPF seems to have decided “backbench MPs qualify for this” is a good attack line, and I’m pointing out why it isn’t.

It doesnt matter if the individual MPs have spouses that earn money or not! Most of them wouldn’t be looking to have a baby! David Shearer is 56!

It’s an example of the absurdity of the policy, and is perfectly fair. As are the questions being asked to those MPs named.

Imagine an MP with a non-earning spouse. Add a baby. How does the picture change? Does it break your heart and have you screaming, “Get that couple a benefit payment!”? No. That’s the point.

Where Labour will scrounge around to find some activist in their ranks to play the role of “victim” of any National policy, in this case the illustrative example can be the MPs who would have to vote on the measure!

After all the intimidation of the overgeared Grey Lynn six figure family by David Cunliffe, and the threats of busting down their doors for more taxes to help support the “deserving”, his flagship policy is instead giving 150k earners a year long baby bonus.

This given a vast number of potentially popular policies they could have campaigned hard on (though not that I agree with them), like a tax free threshold, increasing Working for Families, a capital gains tax, reducing GST or fuel taxes, etc.

Do Labour even want to win the election? This really is so bad it reeks of matchfixing. How much of the Key.PM2014 iPredict stock does Cunners own?

SPC>Look on the bright side, this means that the top rate of tax is going to come in at $150,000.

Are you saying that Cunliffe lacks the ability to simultaneously claim that someone lives in poverty and needs a benefit, but is also a rich prick who should have every last dollar squeezed out of them?

120k is the WFF threshold for a family with *6* children. Not that I agree that we should give benefits to people with 6 children, but trying to say that this threshold is only 30k more than the WFF threshold is disingenuous. From memory, the WFF threshold for a 1 child family is a much more reasonable 70k.

This brain fart by Cunners and the fall out has touched a raw nerve with some of our chardonnay socialists like Ross69, they should at least have the nuts to say, its a fucking stupid statement , but the left are so follow the leader they can’t think for themselves.

Byter, it’s not disingeuous if you genuiely don’t know what the limits are. I’m asking, not telling. It’s still hysteria from the host – $150k is the household income, not the income of an indvidual. And it *is* disingenuous to try to paint it like that.

Speaking of asking…

DPF – are you there? Anyone home? Any update on NATIONAL’s Baby Bribe? The one they “stole” from Labour?

It’s quite ironic that Mr Farrar and others regularly tell us that an income of 75K is not high and certainly doesn’t make someone a rich prick. But now the same people are saying that if you’re on 75K you’re extremely well paid and shouldn’t be getting a baby bonus!

The Right need to get their story straight lest they be seen as rank hypocrites.

Oh and it’s been estimated that having a baby can cost parents about 250,000 by the time the child has reached 18. That’s about $14,000 per year. The baby bonus is a mere $3000 per year and only for the first three years – so about $9,000. In other words parents will have to pay the remaining $240,000! For the Right to say that people will be popping out babies to take advantage of the bonus demonstrates once and for all just how economically illiterate it is.

@Ross69: I think that Eric Crampton has already demolished that argument. Of course, understanding of economic theory isn’t strong amongst the left. The point is that someone who thought about having another baby but couldn’t quite afford it now might – so people making a decision at the point of the “marginal baby” would change their decision. It’s not really that complex a concept.